Cultivating the landscape at the deCordova

LINCOLN - Like lots of folks with big yards, Sarah Montross wanted something original and eye-popping this summer to spruce up the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s front lawns.

So the Lincoln museum recently installed in its 30-acre park a mix of striking sculptures by three very different artists whose varied styles will excite and intrigue visitors.

“A sculpture park is a fabricated version of a cultivated landscape,’’ said Montross, approaching the new works. “These sculptures can be a source of power that occurs when art and landscape are combined.”

The wildly contrasting styles of the most recent works will remind visitors – like a new season of “Game of Thrones” – to be prepared for enchantments, challenges and outright surprises.

Visitor Suzanne Keefe, of Lowell, praised the new works’ “eclectic vision” while her daughter, Suzanne Oates, of Watertown, described them as fascinating examples of “nature gone wild.”

Seeming to hover over the Main Lawn, JaeHyo Lee’s towering “Lotus” fuses treated chestnut logs into an inverted cone that rises like an 18-foot-tall whirlwind rippling through nearby trees.

Montross said the Korean-born artist burned discarded pieces of wood and arranged them into a spire that reveals circular and oblong biomorphic forms that suggest the natural cycle of life and death.

Lee’s “sculpture will bring a calming, organic quality to the main lawn and create a natural conversation with the surrounding trees and landscape,” she said.

Montross said Curry constructed the works, collectively titled “Grove,” from thin sheets of aluminum that allowed him to craft “forms together into composite forms” that might suggest cartoons or Rorschach tests that somehow convey human emotions, such as sorrow or confusion.

While interpretations will certainly vary, she said Curry’s tallest sculpture, the 18-foot “Ugly Mess,” evokes a dejected figure with two large tears running from its cutout eyes while “Homewrecker” suggests two embracing figures that convey the artist’s empathy.

Installed in May as part of the museum’s ongoing Platform series, Letha Wilson’s site specific “Hawaii California Steel” displays large-scale photographs of a rock face in Joshua Tree National Park and a palm frond from Kauai Island, Hawaii that were printed directly onto Cor-Ten steel.

At the park entrance, the museum last summer placed one of Vermont artist Jonathan Gitelson’s inquisitive billboards that delightfully asks, “Are You Here?” Since 2015, Gitelson has been asking the same question with his installations across New England and in upstate New York. It will be up through Sept. 3.

Visiting with his grandchildren, Russ Goodman, of Ventura City, California, said he was “struck by the new approach” of the works by Wilson and Curry.

A developer and artist, he said Wilson’s merging of photography and steel sculpture struck him as innovative and original.

And Goodman observed that Curry “added vibrant colors to pieces that initially appeared a bit ghost-like or like creatures dancing in dreams.”

Lee’s and Curry’s sculptures will be on view for two years while Wilson’s work will be on view through June 2018.

They join about 60 works installed since 1954 throughout the lawns, hills and woods of the 67-year-old sculpture park and museum on Sandy Pond Road.

Montross explained that the works chosen for installation were selected in discussions among Executive Director John Ravenal, senior staff and herself.

Once a sculpture has been selected, she said she uses mock-ups of the work and the deCordova’s grounds to choose specific sites for placement “that dialogue with their surroundings.”

Montross stressed that there is no “correct” reaction for visitors to have to new or long established works but hopes they trust their own reactions, learn a bit about the artist and, over time, revisit their feelings about the sculpture.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to display these monumental works of art in the deCordova Sculpture Park as each introduces a very different element to our campus,” she said.

For first-time visitor Edward Lyons, the new artworks, particularly pieces by Curry and Lee, provided “object lessons in contemporary sculpture.”

“It’s been many years since I studied art but I think these works show new forms of expression that really make me think what sculpture can do,” said the retired medical researcher from Hartford, Connecticut. “I’ve got a lot more looking to do.”

Chris Bergeron is a former longtime staff writer for the MetroWest Daily News. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts or like our Facebook page.

DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

WHERE: 51 Sandy Pond Road

SUMMER HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, through Columbus Day

ADMISSION: $14 adults, $12 seniors, $10 students 13+; free for children under 12 and members, cyclists, Lincoln residents and activive duty military and their families with proper ID.